GrapheneOS Lead on Linux (In)Security (2019) | Hacker News Reader

GrapheneOS Lead on Linux (In)Security (2019)

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15 pointsoDot3 comments

This post was from over 3 years ago. GrapheneOS today has much broader app compatibility via sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer (https://grapheneos.org/usage#sandboxed-google-play) combined with the per-app exploit protection compatibility mode), a much easier installation process (https://grapheneos.org/install/web) and much better privacy / security along with other features (https://grapheneos.org/features). GrapheneOS is now very usable for most people as their only smartphone and has far greater advantages than it did before.

There have been massive privacy and security improvements in both Android and iOS too. Android 13 has fewer weaknesses compared to iOS 16.2 than a comparison over 3 years and Android 13 has more strengths than it did back then. GrapheneOS makes far more changes than it was making back then. We didn't have features like Storage Scopes or the sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer. We didn't have a team of many funded developers back then.

I thought this was an update on his last post from 3 years ago, but it’s the same one. Maybe it should be tagged?

It's the same over 3 year old thread from April 2019.

GrapheneOS has gotten so much better since then that the comparison to iOS there is hardly relevant anymore. You can now use nearly every app from the Play Store on GrapheneOS due to the sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer and per-app exploit protection compatibility mode.

There have been huge improvements in privacy and security by both Android and iOS, but Android has made bigger gains and gotten closer to iOS than before. Pixels have gotten much better. Overall, we think the Android Open Source Project without our changes on a Pixel is better than iOS on an iPhone in these areas today overall. GrapheneOS makes far more improvements to privacy and security than before and has features like Storage Scopes addressing weaknesses of the Android app ecosystem compared to the iOS app ecosystem.

The issues with the Linux kernel are still just as relevant as ever with few changes since then beyond more weak mitigations piled on and the start of official hardware-specific drivers being able to use Rust, which hasn't happened yet upstream and there are no Rust drivers for the hardware we're targeting yet despite that effort being led largely for Android to use it. The title of this thread is about Linux, but that thread is about how GrapheneOS compares to iOS and covering Linux in a response was part of comparing them. Most of the other information there is outdated. I would not say that most people are better off with iOS than GrapheneOS today. Things have changed.

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